Thursday, April 05, 2007

Persons with a casual interest in Roman history might tend to believe that the Empire collapsed and disappeared sometime in the third or fourth centuries A.D. The reality is that the old Empire got a somewhat new lease on life in 330 A.D., when Constantine (called "the Great") transferred his capitol to the far eastern edge of Europe, transforming an obscure port called Byzantium into Constantinople, the New Rome. In this Eastern Roman Empire, the old Latin system changed over time to be overtaken by the native Greek element, but the people and the Emperor never forgot that they were the true and rightful heir to the empire of Augustus. It was only in 1453, scant decades before the voyage of Columbus, that Byzantium reached the end of a long and tired history, falling to the Turks under Sultan Mehmet II. Gibbon might have seen Byzantium as a failure, but it was a failure that lasted over 1000 years, dwarfing in its magnitude the history of the United States and the countries of modern Europe.

The first volume of a trilogy, Norwich's Byzantium: The Early Centuries approaches the Eastern Empire through a narrative history focusing on the personalities of the early rulers, beginning with Constantine and ending in 802 with the death of the Empress Irene. Compared with some of the more infamous Roman Emperors, most of the Byzantines come across as fairly competent and hard working. One had to be, for in those days Byzantium faced numerous threats - from the "barbarian" tribes of Europe and central Asia as well from the Sassanid Empire of Persia. Towards the end of the volume, another threat arises, this time from the obscure reaches of Arabia - the formidable armies of early Islam.

This isn't to say that Byzantium didn't have its share of bloodthirsty megalomaniacs, from Justinian, who (in addition to recovering large portions of the Western Empire through the agency of his superlative general Belisarius as well as instigating a massive building program in the capital) was responsible for the slaughter of 300,000 citizens in the Hippodrome at the climax of the Nika Riots - to the "pathologically cruel" Phocas, who bequeathed to the Empire a legacy of torture and paranoia.

The frustratingly consistent thread running through this history is the endless theological debates on the nature of Christ that caused so much turmoil and wasted energy. Religious advocacy and repression took up much of the energy of the Emperors, making it so difficult to find points of commonality upon which a truly strong state could be built. Religious schism also made more difficult the forging of strong alliances with Western Europe, an issue which will arise again and again in the coming centuries, culminating in the infamous Fourth Crusade, in which Constantinople was sacked by the princes of the West.

Norwich does not spend much time on social and economic history. Little is said of issues such as the Iconoclast controversy, apart from its impact on the policies of the later Emperors of the period under examination. For this, we look to the magisterial works of George Ostrogorsky and A.A. Vasiliev. Still, for a enjoyable introduction to a fascinating and obscure Empire, this work is recommended.